


Nervous Sharks and Newborn Supernovas

by literature_and_ocean_waves



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Charles Xavier has a Ph.D in Adorable, Erik is not a Happy Bunny, F/F, F/M, M/M, Mutant Pride, No Beach Divorce, azazel is a precious muffin, emma frost has no shame, happy birthday wanda and pietro, lots of swearing thank you erik and alex, mentions of mpreg, part of my au, polyamorous mystique is my most favorite thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-27
Updated: 2016-03-27
Packaged: 2018-05-29 12:29:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6374779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/literature_and_ocean_waves/pseuds/literature_and_ocean_waves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Erik was pacing in front of the massive, metal doors, smoking a cigarette, and looking like a caged animal."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nervous Sharks and Newborn Supernovas

**Author's Note:**

> This story follows the same general plot line as most X-Men mpreg fics on this site. Charles has a secondary mutation, now there's babies, and Erik has to stop blowing everything up long enough to get everyone home, blah blah blah. There are a few individual changes that will become clear during the story.

Erik was pacing in front of the massive, metal doors, smoking a cigarette, and looking like a caged animal.

An angry caged animal.

A tiger perhaps. Or maybe a lion.

Which was funny, Raven mused to herself, because she had always pictured him as a shark.  
It was the teeth.

And because, when they had first met him, he was in the ocean swimming after a submarine.

He was a big, metal shark circling around his natural prey, closed doors.

 

Somebody snorted.

Raven did not even have to look up to know it had been Emma.

Who else would be listening to her inner monologue about Erik the Angry Land Shark?

She looked over at Emma anyway. If only just because she was tired of watching Erik’s unnervingly rhythmic pacing.

Emma appeared the same as everyone else in the bunker: sitting quietly on the cold, uncomfortable benches, waiting.

The only difference between her and Raven (and the rest of the team, by extension) was that the telepath had a sleeping Moira MacTaggert lying her lap.

Now it was Raven’s turn to snort.

“Way to make it obvious, Frost.” She mentally jeered, knowing the other woman would no doubt hear it.

Sure enough: “There’s a little thing called shame, doll-baby. And I don’t got it~” No. No, she did not.

Raven could hear the smirk in Emma’s voice as her perfectly manicured fingernails threaded through Moira’s soft, boring, brown hair.

The shapeshifter rolled her large, golden eyes, but said nothing. Internally or verbally. It wasn’t necessary.

 

The slight, flickering sound of a flame being inhaled drew Raven’s attention from Emma back to Erik.

The “Master of Magnetism” had paused his pacing for a moment to take a long drag from his cigarette, eyes wild and darting.

It really added to the spooked animal thing he had going on.

Not for the first time today, Raven wished that Charles was here. He was the only one who could ever really calm Erik down when he was in one of his many moods.

But if Charles were here, then there would be no reason for Erik to be alarmed at all.

It was a classic catch 22.

With mutants.

And one very panicked soon-to-be parent.

Raven was tempted to get up and go to Erik. Try to act as some form of comfort.

But she did not have enough courage for that.

Even if there was some minuscule shred of a chance that she could somehow get Erik to relax a little, she did not want to risk it.

Erik was like a bomb ready to go off; one had to cut just the right wire or else everything would be blown straight to hell.

And being blown straight to hell was not something that anyone needed right now.

Even if they were all sitting in a bomb-proof bunker.

Heh. Bomb-proof maybe. But definitely not Erik-proof. Too much metal in the walls.

So Raven was not going to risk prodding the shark in his tank.

She was not that brave. Or stupid. Whichever.

 

But apparently Emma was.

“You keep pounding your big, black boots like that and you’re going to wear a dent right into the floors, Magneto.” She said.

There came a collective wince from everyone in the room as they were pulled out of their respective stupors by Emma’s brashness.

Except for Erik.

He was just glaring at Emma like he hoped his eyes could shoot lasers right into her lovely face.

Which they could not. That was little Scott Summer’s thing.

But even if Erik had spontaneously stolen Scott’s optical sharpshooters, he would not have used them.

Because if Ms. Emma Frost lost her concentration, from lasers or otherwise, then the good doctors on the other side of those damnable doors might suddenly realize that what they were doing was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a normal surgery.

And Emma knew it.

So she just preened prettily at the glowering metal-bender.

“It’s true, sugar.” She simpered. “If you pace a rut into the floors, then the poor doc might trip when he comes out and send those new babies of you’re a’flyin’.”

Erik opened his mouth, looking very much like he wanted to say something inappropriate for the walls of this supposed school.

Raven did not need to be a telepath to know how badly Erik wished to break his life-long streak of never directly punching a woman.

But he couldn’t, for multiple reasons.

Instead he just barred his shark teeth in her general direction and returned to the numbing comfort of his cigarette.

Emma shined with the infuriating aura of the victorious and went back to cooing over the still napping Agent MacTaggert.

Huh. Moira did look kinda comfy like that.

Well if ya can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

Raven flopped unceremoniously onto Azazel’s legs.

He looked down in surprise and she smiled sweetly up at him.

“Hi~” she said.

Azazel blushed. A funny, subtle, little thing that colored his crimson cheeks a deep burgundy.

Raven loved when he did that.

He let her stay without any complaints and she snuggled in contently, humming a happy, nonsensical tune. He was, by far, her most favorite pillow.

Raven could feel Hank’s bespectacled gaze fall on her back, but she ignored him.

Precious pouting from a blue furball was not going to change anything. Emotional resolutions reached or not.

 

The hours were dragging by and everyone was growing more on edge by the minute.

Boredom mixed with anxiety hung in the air like a wet fog.

Sean and Janos had taken up cards, Gin Rummy it looked like. Raven halfheartedly watched them from her spot in Azazel’s warm lap. Janos was winning. No surprise there.

Hank was overzealously cleaning his glasses and Angel was taking another stab at braiding his thick fur. Raven still thought it an ill-fated attempt, but cute nonetheless.

Finally, all the tension in their unwelcoming room shattered like a bullet through weak, breakaway glass.

Naturally, the ever violate Alex Summers was the one to fire the shot.

“Fuck!” He yelled. “Aren’t they done yet?!” His voice was rough from the disuse of sitting quietly in a bunker for so long. “This is insane!”

Everyone stood stock-still. Hank’s fur was standing on end.

“Alex…” He cautioned, looking very, very nervous.

Rightly so.

Because Erik was now looming over them all like the terrifying German land shark that he was.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Havoc!” Erik snarled, tone bitingly sarcastic. “I didn’t realize this was sooooo difficult for you! By all means! Barge right in there and demand that they hurry up! Because god forbid that that you are bored!”

The rest of the team cowered, to varying degrees, in the face of Erik’s wrath. Even the literal ice queen that was Emma Frost.

But Alex, who never knew when to quit on anything, stood his metaphorical ground.

“Come off your high horse, Lehnsherr!” He shouted. (Though Erik was always on his high horse compared to everyone else, Raven thought. Damn his ridiculously long legs.) “You know that this is weird! It doesn’t take this long to deliver two babies!” Alex’s voice broke a little. “Something must be wrong…”

Suddenly Raven understood.

Alex wasn’t throwing a hissy-fit because he was bored. He was scared out of his mind.

Because of how much the kind-hearted Professor X had come to mean to him over this last year.

Raven felt a twinge of compassion for him. Alex had lost so much in his life and he was so young. No wonder this whole thing was tearing him up so badly.

But Raven’s tiny epiphany was not going to be enough to help Alex’s current situation.

Because Erik either had not noticed what Raven had or, if he had, he did not care. Maybe somehow both, knowing Erik.

Regardless of anything, Alex’s “Something must be wrong” line was a very, very poor choice of words.  
Like… the absolute worst.

Erik strode furiously over to Alex and grabbed him by the front of his t-shirt, lifting him off the ground. “You WILL be silent, you little shit!” Erik thundered. “Nothing is wrong! You hear me?! Nothing!”

Erik’s normally handsome face had contorted into an ugly mask of rage. Fueled by terror and tortured hours of pacing a cold hallway.

Any man in Alex’s position would have pissed themselves in fear by now.

But one does not spend years in jail without developing a solidly thick skin.

Alex looked Erik right in the eye, nerves steeled from the experience of dozens of prison cafeteria fights, and spoke his point calmly.

“But what if it is? Emma can only do so much and we have been waiting out here for so long…”

Raven could see what Alex was getting at. None of them had any idea what to expect, not even with encyclopedic knowledge of Hank McCoy. Any other person might have been more empathetic to Alex’s feelings. Especially someone like Charles.

But Alex was not having this conversation with the ever-patient Dr. Xavier.

He was being seethed at by the already rather unstable Erik Lehnsherr.

“You son of a bitch!” Erik hissed, completely inflamed by now. He pulled back one arm, clearly intending to deck Alex in his boyish mug.

Raven reflexively closed her eyes, not wanting to watch.

“WAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!”

A shrill cry broke the momentary silence like the firing of a canon.

Raven peeked over at Alex. Where had Erik hit him?

But Erik and Alex were exactly as they had been moments before, frozen.

Erik’s arm was still poised for a punch and Alex’s t-shirt was still bunched up in his large, square-shaped hand. Only their expressions had changed.

Alex looked startled.

Erik looked wrecked. His eyes were impossibly wide and hopeful.

The whole room waited with bated breath until a second cry, this one even more voluminous than the first, made everyone jump a good six inches out of their seats.

Erik dropped Alex to the floor like a limp bag of flour.

He cautiously took a few steps towards the locked doors, visibly shaking from head to toe.

“Charles…” He breathed.

Erik watched the door and everyone else watched Erik.

Click, click. The familiar sound of a lock being opened.

The younger of the two doctors, Dr. Binthes Raven remembered his name was, poked his head through the doorway. “Mr. Lehnsherr?” He asked quietly.

Erik seemed to have forgotten how words worked and just nodded mutely.

Dr. Binthes smiled, as if used to this kind of behavior. “I am just letting you know that we are almost done. We are binding up the incision now and Mr. Xavier should be waking up soon.” He his smile grew into a grin. “The delivery was a complete success and you have two strong, healthy, beautiful babies waiting to meet you.”

Erik looked like he was in serious danger of fainting.

“Healthy… Babies… Waiting…” He stammered.

And then, just because life is deliciously hilarious sometimes, he did faint!

Luckily for Erik, Hank’s reflexes had become as enhanced as the rest of his cobalt-colored, fuzzy self and he caught the fainted fool before he could bash his skull onto the ground. Thus avoiding need for surgery on yet another X-Men team leader. Hank eased him to the floor and Erik waved an impatient hand at him.

“I got it. I got it.” He muttered.

Everyone in the room knew that Erik did not “got it”. At all. But they chose to keep their mouths shut.

Dr. Binthes looked like he was holding in a laugh.

“Give us about ten more minutes to get everything cleaned up and then immediate family can come in.” He nodded toward Raven. “You’re the sister, correct?” He asked. She smiled in acknowledgement. “Good.” He said. “Then you and Mr. Lehnsherr can come in together.” With that, he shut the door behind him.

The group was silent for a while.

Just kind of… processing.

Then Sean, who could never remain quiet when something exciting was happening, leaped up into the air with a deafening whoop from his impressively mutated lungs.

“We had a baby today!” He screeched.

A few people shushed him, but all were grinning goofily. Not at all immune to his words or the enthusiasm behind them.

“Babies.” Hank corrected kindly.

“Babies.” Sean repeated, a broad smile threatening to split his cheeks in half.

“Babies…” Erik echoed. His voice was a guttural croak, a rather jarring sound compared to his usual smooth baritone.

Hank patted his arm. “We’ve got you, pal.”

Erik grunted in response, which for him was as much of a thank you as anyone could get, and stood up. Raven was by his side immediately. He ignored her, but she had known him long enough to understand that he was grateful to have her there.

A few minutes later, a slender hand slipped through the crack in the doorway and beckoned them forward. Raven walked in step with Erik, heart thudding her broad, blue-scaled chest.

She was not scared. Not at all.

She was… excited. And apprehensive. And ecstatic. And anxious.

A whole mix of weird emotions that she did not feel like sorting through right then.

Messy stuff. Charles stuff.

But then she saw Dr. Binthes holding two impossibly small bundles in his arms and all that messy stuff flew out of her mind faster than that time a few months ago when Erik had gotten fed up with Sean’s terrible puns and had thrown him of a third story window.

The same shell-shocked feeling that currently gripped Raven must have also taken up root inside Erik as well. If his blown-wide pupils were anything to go by.

He sunk down, like a balloon deflating, into one of the available chairs. Dr. Binthes, who had years of experience dealing with men in Erik’s position, patiently waited until Erik was ready and then placed the two slightly squirming creatures into his arms.

Raven crouched next to him and peered down at the pair of people who had crowded everyone’s thoughts for so many moons.

 

 

The first thing that Charles noticed was the headache.

That was not so unusual.

As a telepath, headaches had plagued him from boyhood and this one had many levels to go before it reached the same status as one of his famous migraines.

The next thing that he noticed was that he could not see.

That was… less not so unusual.

His eyes had, for the most part, always worked satisfactorily.

Had he suddenly gone blind? That would be unfortunate. He had a school to run.

Then he realized that his eyes were simply closed.

Oh. Well that was easily fixed.

He pried open his eyes-

BRIGHT!!!!!!!

And furiously shut them again.

Who had replaced all his nice, normal light fixtures with bloody supernovas?!?! And why?!?!

How ridiculous a decision! He would need to fire his decorator immediately!

Well his eyes were out of the picture. He supposed he could try the rest of him. Though at the moment, his body seemed to be on another plane of existence.

Still. He must try.

Keeping his eyes shut, he attempted to relax everything else.

Little by little, he began to get a sense of his body back.

It was terribly sore. But he did feel less close to death now.

Cautiously, he tried opening his eyes again.

It was still very bright, but the supernovas were gone at least.

Slowly, things came back into focus. All perfectly normal and as they should be.

Light fixtures? Check.

Bedposts? Check.

Medical supplies? Check…?

Then, like waking from an especially vivid dream, everything came flooding back.

The sharp, jabbing pain in his midsection.

Hank carrying him down to their make-shift delivery room in his lab.

Moira making frantic phone calls to the local hospital about a patient who needed a midwife for an urgent home birth.

Emma controlling the doctors, forcing them to believe that performing a caesarean section surgery on a pregnant man wasn’t something totally absurd.

And finally the gentle siren’s whisper of sleep as the heavy anesthesia flowed through his veins.

Charles tried to sit up and was rewarded with his limbs going on strike and the sensation of someone stabbing him in the stomach.

“Bloody hell…” He muttered, his mouth feeling like it was stuffed with cotton.

Whelp. His body was useless and he could not speak properly.

Thank god for superpowers.

“Hello?” He called out telepathically. “Anyone there?”

Immediately, almost a dozen minds flared to life on his consciousness like freshly born stars and he reflexively closed his eyes.

Not that would make a difference. It never had.

“Charles!” The voices all cried.

“Are you awake?!” One yelled. Sean.

“Are you okay?” asked another. Moira.

“Does anything hurt?” probed a third. Hank.

Charles gave the cerebral equivalent to a raised hand for silence. The cacophony of thoughts quieted to a low murmur.

“I am fine.” He answered, calmly. “Sore. But fine. Can someone come help me sit up?”

“On it.” Came the unified dual answers of both Raven and Erik. Charles could hear the distant sounds of footsteps.

It was Raven who reached him first. “Charles!” She boomed and proceeded to, as near as Charles could tell, hug the very life out of him.

“Yes, yes.” He wheezed, patting her on the back. “Glad to see you too, Raven...”

She reluctantly let go after another moment and sized him up. “How are you?” She asked.

Charles chuckled.

“Well I feel worse than that time at university when you dared me to do fifteen tequila shots in a row, so…”

Raven laughed, sounding like bells chiming and Charles smiled. It was so good to have her here.

“Childbirth will do that to you.” She said. Indeed it would.

Charles shifted his body as best he could without causing everything to seize up in pain again. “Where’s Erik?” He asked.

“He’s coming.” She said.

“And the…” He trailed off. Raven beamed.

“He hasn’t put them down once since Dr. Binthes handed them over.”

Charles grinned, warm and genuine.

“That sounds like Erik.” He said.

“What sounds like me?”

And there he was.

Erik. His Erik.

Walking in confidently and looking somehow simultaneously both emotionally exhausted and ridiculously attractive.

Ever the wonderful conundrum, he was, even on a remarkable day like this.

He was holding something. Or rather two somethings.

Charles’s tongue felt like it was made of lead and weighed over ten pounds.

“Nngh…?” Was all he could manage.

Erik grinned, his caetus canines glowing with pride and joy.

“Here, meyn libe.” He said and, before Charles could squeak out any ideas to the contrary, he had placed the two mysterious somethings into Charles’s terrified arms.

For the smallest moment, Charles did not want to look down at the new charges lying on his chest.

What if something was wrong?

What if he had not done this right?

What if? What if? What if?

Charles looked down.

Two tiny people started curiously up at him.

A girl and a boy.

Both ruddy-faced and chubby and completely, utterly perfect.

Charles’s breath caught in his throat, along with a large lump.

They were, without any sort of doubt, the two most beautiful beings to have ever existed.

The supernovas from his light fixtures were back.

Except that they had all congealed into one giant mass.

And they had moved out from those seemingly unbreakable lightbulbs and migrated to his chest.

His heart, to be more specific.

Charles felt like he might burst with all the light and glory and wonder currently blossoming inside him.

It was like when he was cold and took a long, hot sip of his favorite tea. So warm and soft.

But a million times stronger than that.

“Are you… crying, Charles?” Raven asked and it took him a second to realize that he was indeed.

He smiled. “Yes.”

His two favorite people in the whole world (though they might have some competition now) sat down on opposite sides of him, admiring the newborns.

“Which one is older?” Charles asked.

“Wanda.” Erik said, stroking her silky, baby cheek. “But only by a minute or so.”

Charles snickered. He had worked with enough six year olds to know that his daughter was going to lord this information over her twin brother’s head for years.

Raven was cooing down at her. “She looks like you, Charles.” She said. “Like when you were a boy and had that precious baby face.”

Erik was smirking evilly. “You mean like now? I see no difference.”

Raven chortled and Charles resisted the urge to thump Erik on the shoulder. If only because he was holding children and his arms were out of commission.

Raven was right though. Wanda did look like him.

Similar facial features, bright blue eyes, and the soft tresses covering her teensy head hinted at his own wavy, brown locks. She would be a clever little lady; Charles could feel it.

Pietro was just the opposite. A spitting image of Erik.

Sharp nose, stormy gray eyes, and mischief sassily dancing in his very soul, visible even this early. Just like his doppelganger of a father, Pietro would be a handful indeed.

Charles loved them both. Ferociously.

He cuddled them close, a final but very pressing question burning on his lips.

“And are they mutants?” He asked.

Both Raven and Erik were silent for a good thirty seconds. Only the airy sighing of the babies could be heard.

“We don’t know.” Erik said at last. “There is nothing exterior anyway…” They all knew Raven was their only model for this apparently avoided phenomenon.

Charles looked at Erik, deeply serious.

“And if, in a few years, it becomes clear that they are not mutants?” He said, ignoring the rather painful desire to read his lover’s mind for an answer. Erik needed his privacy on his highly sensitive issue, so Charles did not venture forward.

He waited. Patient as ever, though seriously not feeling that way.

Then Erik did something that Charles would have never dreamed possible when he had imagined this scenario so many times over these last few months.

He smiled.

“Charles,” He said, voice kinder than he had ever heard it before. “These children survived the strangest conception in the history of the planet, an almost-war between the Soviets and the Americans, and the unbelievable chaos that living with the X-Men requires.” His eyes were so bright. “Even if they are homo sapiens children, there are no human beings on this earth who could come close to being that special. We have already won; powers or no.”

Then, just because Charles thought this day could not get any more wonderfully bizarre, he kissed him senseless, leaving the poor telepath completely dumbstruck. Raven roared with laughter at the two of them, guffawing out a choked “Idiots!” and then the rest of their oddball family tumbled into the room, having finally gathered the courage to disobey scary Erik’s orders, and talking excitedly to the new babies.

And somewhere, in the back of Charles’s exceptional, and currently very preoccupied, mind, he knew that blurting out some incredibly personal information on a war-threatened Cuban beach had been, undoubtedly, the right bloody decision.

 

The End.


End file.
